UK to raise climate talks as security council issue

The British government will make a concerted effort this week to push climate change up the global agenda when it raises the subject for the first time within the UN security council.

Tomorrow's security council debate has been achieved by the UK despite opposition from the US, Russia and China, which made clear they did not see climate change as an appropriate subject for the security council, though they have stopped short of killing the debate via a veto.

The British position is getting an important boost from unexpected quarters: the US military. Eleven former generals are issuing a 63-page report today calling on the Bush administration to do more to counter climate change, warning that otherwise there could be "significant national security challenges" to the US. The generals include Anthony Zinni, retired chief of Central Command and a critic of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, and Gordon Sullivan, formerly the US army's most senior general.

Writing under the name of the Centre for Naval Analyses thinktank, the generals say that global warming could act as a "threat multiplier" by hitting volatile and unstable countries the hardest. They point to Darfur and Somalia as examples of conflicts stemming from struggles over scarce resources, which can only be exacerbated by rising global temperatures.

Although Britain refuses to site examples of global warming-related conflicts it has pursued a similar argument in justifying the debate; the government is determined to shift the thinking on climate change, away from its being labelled an environmental issue and towards its place in security and the economy.

Britain's foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, will introduce the day-long debate by explaining why she sees climate change as a security council matter. But the extent of resistance she faces is underlined by the fact that, of the five permanent and 10 rotating members of the security council, only two other representatives - the foreign ministers of Italy and the Slovak republic - are due to attend.

The US, which has consistently resisted any attempt to deal with global warming through international mechanisms and has refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, will send its ambassador to the UN instead.

The same chilly response is expected from Russia and China. The French elections explain the lack of any political presence from the fifth permanent member.

The British-led debate has also caused a groundswell of grumbling from some developing countries, which see it as an attempt by the big powers on the security council to encroach on the territory of the general assembly.

"We have never thought the security council is the only place you can discuss climate change and we have made that clear to those countries who accuse us of encroaching," a UK official said. "But you have to think about the costs of inaction on climate change."

In a separate move, Britain's international development secretary, Hilary Benn, will make a speech in New York this morning presenting climate change as a threat to peaceful development. In words that will dovetail with the foreign secretary's UN address, he will foretell wars fought over dwindling resources, saying: "What will we do when people start fighting - not over ideas or identities, but over water? And what will we do when people start seeking shelter in our countries from environmental catastrophe?" Climate change can only be dealt with internationally, he will say.